


Stories

by bluebeholder



Series: Writing About Video Games You Haven't Played [7]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Extended Metaphors, Fairy Tale Retellings, Holding Hands, M/M, Sunsets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 07:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12206322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: The Outsider tells a lot of stories for Corvo's benefit, and he thinks it's high time Corvo told one in return.Of course, this, like all stories, has a certain meaning to it.





	Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, look at that: more fic! Looks like I really have grown a new fandom. :) I hope you all enjoy this one, it's...fairly self-indulgent. 
> 
> Corvo's story is derived from “The Giant Who Had No Heart In His Body”.

“I have told you stories before.”

Corvo doesn’t react. Of course he has. The Outsider is a never-ending font of history, tales of choices made and unmade, always related to the topic at hand only in hindsight. Whenever he starts talking about history like that, Corvo braces himself for some kind of nightmare choice ahead of him. If he can just decipher what the Outsider is on about, he might glean some kind of insight to his choice. 

He’s never pulled it off yet.

They’re sitting side by side on a rooftop. Corvo gazes out over Dunwall with his legs hanging over the edge, while the Outsider sits perpendicular to him, cross-legged and staring at Corvo. This spot is out of sight of anyone who’d look askance. Of course they wouldn’t see the Outsider--he’s doing that thing he always does, making himself visible only to Corvo so it looks like Corvo is talking to thin air--but they’d see Corvo. Safety is a necessity. He doesn’t have time to be seen. 

Somehow, he still has time for the Outsider. 

“What would you call those stories, dear Corvo?”

“Nuisances,” Corvo says, giving the deity a sideways look.

He gets a slanted half-smile for that, the Outsider’s equivalent of a full laugh. “I suppose they are, to one who doesn’t understand their significance.”

Corvo returns his gaze to the panorama of the city, cast in the golden light of late afternoon, spires and chimneys rolling like the curve of a reef. “I never get it until it’s too late.”

“Where would be the fun in it if you understood it in time?”

Sometimes Corvo could just  _ strangle  _ the Outsider.

There’s silence between them for a moment. The world, however, is not silent. The sounds of industry, the clamor of people, the cry of gulls--and what Corvo thinks might be distant song of whales, if he listens hard enough--fill the air. Up here, on the roof, it’s like being treated to a symphony, one that people on the streets rarely hear. 

“You like your idea of ‘fair play’,” the Outsider says after a while. His black eyes make it impossible to know where he’s looking: Corvo’s eyes, his lips, his hands...or all of him. “I have told you so _ many  _ of my stories, dear one. And I’m…”

“...bored,” Corvo finishes. He heaves a sigh that’s mostly theatrics, for both their benefit, for the show of the thing. “You want me to tell you a story.” 

The Outsider shrugs, almost imperceptible. “If you choose.”

“The only other person who’s ever asked me for that is Emily, and she hasn’t asked since. I’m not good at telling stories.”

“No? Your story’s held my attention for long enough.”

That sparks a small flare of anger. “My life isn’t a story.”

“My mistake,” the Outsider says. Surprisingly, it isn’t insincere. Does the god really feel something resembling guilt for trivializing all that Corvo’s done? Maybe hanging around a human is getting to him, after all. 

Tacit acceptance of the unspoken apology is the thing here. “What kind of story?” 

“Something I haven’t heard before.”

“You’re a  _ god _ .”

“I’m neither omniscient nor omnipresent.”

Corvo thinks on it. He doesn’t hem or haw; there’s no point. “Once upon a time,” he starts, thinking of the stories that he’d heard as a child, “six princes set out from their father’s castle to find brides, leaving only the seventh brother behind. The six were warlike and powerful, but the seventh--named Boots--was only kind and clever, and had no interest in ranging to far-off lands and warring with other men to find a wife.”

“A story about a clever man,” the Outsider interjects dryly. “How very like you.”

“Hush,” Corvo dares to say, casting the Outsider a glance. “You want a story.”

The Outsider, elbow on knee and chin propped on hand, continues to watch him. “So I do.”

“Well, the six princes found wives and began to journey home. But they made a mistake, and crossed into the lands of a giant who transformed them all to stone.” Corvo pauses for a moment, considering anew exactly how  _ that  _ must have felt. “A year and a day passed, and still the six princes hadn’t come home. The king was in mourning, but Boots offered to go and seek out his brothers and discover their fate.”

“Only a year and a day. I remember when men went on journeys ten years or more and still came home to dinner on the table,” the Outsider says scornfully. 

Corvo smiles at that. So the Outsider’s interested after all. “He did not know where he was going, but he was determined to search thoroughly. He took as much bread as he could carry, and the last horse in his father’s stables, a tired old nag. And he took no sword, for Boots intended to fight no one and harm nothing.”

The Outsider tilts his head. “I begin to see why you like this story, my dear Corvo.”

Corvo ignores the Outsider and continues. “On his travels, he encountered a hungry raven, to whom he gave his bread. The raven told him that, when Boots needed him, he would come and help. On the shore of a sea, he met a beached whale, which he pushed back into the water. The whale, too, pledged its services to Boots. And finally Boots met a wolf, and because his horse’s heart was giving out he let the wolf devour the horse.”

“What a clever man.”

“He _ was _ clever. When the wolf, grateful, offered its services to him, Boots asked the wolf if the wolf knew where his brothers were. The wolf did, and what’s more, the wolf let Boots put his saddle on his back and ride him to the giant’s castle.”

Corvo glances at the Outsider, who’s sitting up straight, fixing his whole attention on Corvo’s tale. Clearly, the riding-the-wolf bit was unexpected. 

“At the castle, Boots discovered that a beautiful princess was of course captured by the giant. He also found that his brothers had been turned to stone along with their brides. The wolf, who was himself quite cunning, advised Boots to obey the princess.”

“I expected something more violent than this,” the Outsider muses as Corvo pauses to remember what happens next. The Outsider has moved close, sitting near enough that Corvo could touch him, if he wished. He won’t, not yet. 

“The princess told Boots that the giant had taken out his heart and hidden it, so he could not be killed. And she pleaded with Boots to rescue her. Of course he agreed, so she hid Boots so that, when the giant returned, he would not suspect a thing. With her own cunning, the princess convinced the giant to reveal that his heart was hidden in an egg in a duck in a well in an abbey on an island in a lake.”

“That’s the most unnecessarily complex hiding place I have ever heard of.”

“Perhaps you’d have heard of it, if you were omniscient.”

Now that’s a proper scowl. Corvo breaks into a smile: the Outsider looks downright  _ petulant _ now. How he’s gotten a god to this point, he just doesn’t know. But here they are, anyway. 

“Boots rode the wolf to the lake and swam out to the island. The abbey’s doors were locked and the key was hung upon the steeple, too high to reach. Boots called the raven to fetch the key, and got inside. He found the duck in the well, but when he picked it up it was so frightened that it laid its egg, which sank to the bottom of the well. So Boots called on the whale, which swam down and retrieved the egg for him.”

“I would like to hear your explanation of why a  _ whale  _ fits inside a well.”

“It’s a children’s story.”

The Outsider squints at him. “That doesn’t make any more sense.”

“Would you like me to finish, or not?”

“...go on.”

“So Boots went back to the castle and confronted the giant. He squeezed the egg and the giant howled with pain. He released the princes and brides on Boots’ command, and the wolf devoured the giant’s heart, killing him instantly. The seven brothers and seven brides rode home to their father’s castle, where they were greeted with joy. Boots married the princess, and…”

“...they all lived happily ever after.” The Outsider shakes his head. “How...expected.”

Corvo shrugs. “He didn’t, actually. There’s the story of how he outwitted a troll, too, and about his twelve daughters, who were enchanted to dance all night until they wore through their shoes, and so on.”

The Outsider hums thoughtfully. Corvo freezes as the cold tip of one finger traces the edge of the fabric wrapped around Corvo’s hand. “His story never ends.”

“No.”

“There’s a grain of truth in that.”

Over the fabric, around the wrist. Corvo tries not to focus too hard on that pressure. This is a rare moment where the Outsider’s affection could almost be mistaken for a human’s. Almost.

“Stories don’t ever end,” the Outsider continues. “A man dies and his legacy lives on. He leaves behind the ghost of his presence in every street he walked, every stone he overturned, every eye he met. Haunting the world from beyond the Void.”

Corvo turns and looks at the Outsider. He catches the god’s hand in his, linking their fingers together, the Outsider’s bones as fine as a bird’s and a thousand times as strong. “What will I haunt?” he asks. 

The Outsider pauses. The silence between them stretches out. The sun is going down over the sea, drowning red in the wine-dark waters. Shadows creep over the rooftops, turning Dunwall’s steeples and towers into a forest of gravestones. The plague has long since ended, but it seems appropriate, now, to look at this city as a mausoleum. Once, the dead littered the streets; someday, Corvo is sure, they will again. There is no true peace to be found in the Isles, only the absence of war. The story never ends.

At last the Outsider smiles, cold and bitter. “I suspect, Corvo, that you’ll haunt me.”


End file.
